"One Unwired Day" versus five unwired years

Anyone else besides me remember where you were and what you were doing five years ago today?

If the post's title didn't give you a clue, "One Unwired Day" was an Intel-sponsored promotion on this date in 2003 intended to help hawk both Wi-Fi and their then-new Centrino processors, in which they picked up the tab at certain play-for-pay hotspots-or at least were supposed to.

As I recall, I tried hooking up at the Borders bookstore out at 119th and Metcalf, but wasn't able to get enough of a signal to even bring up the login page. Borders was (and as far as I know still is) lit up by T-Mobile, which along with a few other national providers whose names I don't remember and some of which have almost certainly been consigned to the ash heap of history, partnered with Intel for the free day. I think Wayport, which I don't believe was a particpant in the promotion, had a few places around town, but I don't recall if any of the local McDonald's restaurants were among them. AT&T, which would essentially swallow up Wayport in time, wasn't in the Wi-Fi game yet. I believe Sprint was, but not locally. To the best of my memory, most of the play-for-pay hotspots in the area belonged to the now-defunct Flash Network, a local operation.

Having been soured on play-for-pay by my experience, I was elated when I spotted the Kansas City Star story announcing that Union Station would unwire for free about a month later. Although circumstances would prevent me from trying it out until after Christmas, both it and the Crown Center atrium hotspot, which I discovered early the following year, quickly became favorite hangouts. On the other hand, I don't remember the last time I was in a Borders for more than the time it took to pick up what I came there for and hit the road afterwards.

Maybe-just maybe-it would help if they'd offer free access for more than a day, and more often than once in five years.

Herewith the last word...

with regard to the NKC Public Library's Wi-Fi printing:

http://www.northkclibrary.org/news.cfm?newsid=11

Nice going, NKC. A printer available only to Windows users. What'll you think of next?

Can't help wondering, though, what you'll say to the first Macintosh users that aren't running Windows-either because unlike our friend Macenstein they couldn't see spending an extra couple of hundred bucks for it, or because they're using a Power PC-based Mac that can't run Windows-that ask you how they can fatten your coffers by paying you ten cents a page-or whatever you charge-for the dubious privilege of printing away from home. I mean, will it be something like, "Sorry, your tax money isn't as valuable to us as that from Windows users; you'll have to get in line to use one of our workstations and thus make it unavailable for someone else who doesn't own a laptop if you need to print?"

I still think this is one of the least worthwhile services I can imagine, but if you consider it worth offering to your patrons, why not offer it to ALL OF THEM? Mac and Linux users pay taxes too, you know. So do people who may have acquired second-hand laptops running earlier versions of Windows that your handy-dandy .exe file might not be supported by. You know-people who might have scraped together the cash to buy those second-hand laptops just so they wouldn't have to wait in line for one of your workstations anymore.

There are cross-platform solutions available for providing this service. Having considered spending the public's money to buy anything else-let alone actually buying it-strikes me as malfeasance. Good luck trying to convince the public otherwise when you're inevitably called upon to do so. You'll need it.